theomachy

it starts innocuously–as the trainee who’s been there the longest, welcoming the new kids becomes his thing, mostly because cheol doesn’t want to. and jinhyuk really doesn’t mind showing the newbies around, holding their hand (whether metaphorically or literally) through their first day at transform media. it’s scary, venturing out into the unknown. if he can help somehow, he’s happy to.

wooseok is hard to read, but jinhyuk thinks he must be nervous to be thrown into all of this without a warning. jinhyuk remembers feeling like he’d wandered into the deep end of the pool with no lifeguard present. but here, he is the lifeguard, and he’ll rescue trainees like wooseok from going under. so he lets wooseok stick close throughout the day, shares his mother’s homemade snacks during breaks, and waits with him until he finishes changing after practice. 

the sun’s long since set as they leave the building, and jinhyuk turns to wooseok with a frown. “d’you know your way home?” he asks, and wooseok jerks his head in a nod. 

“yeah.” he points in the opposite direction of where jinhyuk’s headed. “i have to catch the bus from there.” but wooseok doesn’t move, frozen in place as if held there by some unseen force. 

jinhyuk waits, then says eventually, “i’m going that way too. want to walk together?” 

“okay.” he thinks that it’s something akin to relief softening the corners of wooseok’s eyes. 

they chatter about a number of different things on their way there, and jinhyuk stays with wooseok until his bus arrives. once the bus is finally out of sight, he turns back around and begins the late-night trek to his train station. 

it becomes routine after that, and despite the aches and pains, jinhyuk doesn’t mind the doubled journey, because it gives him more time to spend with wooseok. 

(wooseok eventually figures it out. “you should’ve told me,” he says, faintly mortified, and jinhyuk just laughs and slings and arm over his shoulder. 

“you needed me to stay with you,” he says. “i was your lifeguard.” it was my choice. he’s never regretted it.) 

II.

they see the first frozen movie together.

it’s not a date, except it is, but jinhyuk is too young to call it that. it’s ‘friends hanging out’ instead, though cheol says, “if you want it to be a date, then make it a date” when jinhyuk asks him for advice. like it’s just that simple, that straightforward. jinhyuk wonders if these things just come easy to cheol. 

“isn’t that weird? we’re both boys.” and he feels like wooseok is easily spooked. hopefully not by him anymore, but uncertainty makes its home in jinhyuk’s chest, whispering that wooseok wouldn’t like it if–

“it’s only weird if you act like it’s weird.”

and maybe cheol has a point, but jinhyuk still can’t bring himself to say it. ‘it’s a date!’ even casually, even nonchalantly, might betray deeper feelings he doesn’t know how to deal with. so he sticks to ‘friends hanging out’, but it’s more. 

he dresses nicer than usual, pays for all the food, and slips his hand into wooseok’s in the darkened theatre when hans turns evil. wooseok doesn’t question it, doesn’t pull away, just gives jinhyuk’s hand a reassuring squeeze as if to say, hi and i’m here and i wouldn’t do that to you and this is a date. 

jinhyuk tries to explain it to cheol later, but can’t. some memories belong only to him.

(they see frozen 2 together as well. 

jinhyuk calls wooseok first, two tickets in hand. they’re the pretty ones, collectibles in their own right. he wonders if wooseok would give him his to keep if he asked. maybe it should be awkward, asking wooseok to do anything with him–they still haven’t returned to what they used to be, and perhaps they never will–but he blurts the invitation out before he can convince himself this a bad idea. wooseok agrees quickly.

“it’s a date,” jinhyuk says, and there’s a hitch of breath followed by a long pause on the other end of the line. “figure of speech,” he adds belatedly, resignedly. some risks aren’t worth taking anymore. 

“yeah,” wooseok exhales. “of course. see you then.”

wooseok pays him back for the ticket, and they buy snacks separately. jinhyuk’s hand twitches, but he keeps it glued to the armrest and never glances over, even when he can feel wooseok’s eyes on the side of his face.

it’s a date, except it’s not.)

III.

here is how jinhyuk realizes he’s in love with a boy he can’t have:

in the back room of a tv station, with a lukewarm cup of water in his hands, his manager bearing down on him with hissed advice about the questions the hosts are going to ask. “they’ll ask about your first love,” he says. “and just tell them it was someone in elementary school but you haven’t seen them since.” 

it’s a standard, safe answer for an idol. it feels wrong. jinhyuk knows that variety shows like this are mostly an opportunity to flex the carefully constructed background his company designed for him, but he doesn’t want to lie about this. “but i only met wooseok in middle school–” 

he stops, and his manager gives him a pointed look. “what does that have to do with anything?” he asks, and jinhyuk can’t answer.

it hits him then, and half the water in his cup spills onto the floor, onto his shoes. my first love was wooseok. and a second later, i’m still in love with wooseok. and it’s so goddamn clear, so obvious that jinhyuk cannot believe he didn’t see it before. maybe he did. maybe on some level, he’s always know, but–

his eyes burn with unshed tears, but all he wants is to laugh. jinhyuk gets the chance to do neither, because the assistants usher him on set for the taping not long after. he puts on a smile for the show, focuses on his reactions and on making people happy, on looking like the comedian he knows they want him to be. it’s his image. it’s a shield. it’s armor. it keeps him from having to think about wooseok’s shade and the confession on his own lips, a year too late.

the hosts ask the first love question eventually. jinhyuk takes a breath. “we met a while ago,” he says, deliberately ambiguous. “we were close for some time, and i really liked them. like, i couldn’t imagine not being with them, you know?” cheol pinches his knee in a silent warning. “but i basically got rejected before i could confess, so maybe i have some heartbreak-related trauma?” jinhyuk laughs and shakes his head.“we didn’t keep in touch after that,” he continues. “i doubt they even remember me.” 

(”real subtle,” cheol says later, acidic. “like we don’t know you were talking about wooseok. like wooseok doesn’t know you were talking about him.

jinhyuk shrugs. “i doubt he watches.” he didn’t really lie. wooseok probably doesn’t remember him.)

IV.

he sees wooseok once from a distance, in those three years they spend apart. 

it’s on the train. spect8 is suspended in limbo these days, and jinhyuk is astute enough to recognize the hiatus for the death sentence it is. he picks up a part-time job at a chicken place, and what hurts is that no one recognizes him enough even to mock him for working a menial job when he should be–hell, he doesn’t know. he should be a star. they promised him he would be a star.

he usually logs into the fancafe during his commute to leave messages for their fans and read the ones they’ve left for the members. but the membership numbers have been declining along with the messages themselves, and some days jinhyuk feels like he’s yelling into the void. it’s a quiet day when he looks up, defeated, and spots him.

wooseok, with his glasses on, looking down at something on his phone. he’s wearing a black sweater that looks too big for him, and his hair is soft and floppy. he sways in place with the motion of the train, but doesn’t seem in danger of falling or hurting himself. 

and there’s a hollow place in jinhyuk’s chest that aches at the sight, that wants to push his way through the crowd and come to a stop in front of wooseok and say, hi, it’s me, i miss you–

but seungwoo is behind him. he taps wooseok on the shoulder and says something. wooseok replies without looking away from his phone, then sighs and puts it away when seungwoo persists. the corners of his mouth tug up in a small, private smile.

jinhyuk almost calls out, then doesn’t. 

(sometimes, he writes in the fancafe later, i remember that i’m not all that brave.)

V.

years and years after, jinhyuk writes wooseok a letter.

five pages, single-sided, a messy stream of consciousness. jinhyuk’s never had a way with words, really, but they spill out of him in a frenzy, desperate to escape. 

he starts page one with, you probably guessed this a long time ago, but i used to be in love with you. 

i don’t know if i ever really got over you, he admits on page two. but i need to.

page three is introspective. no one will write any stories about us. people crave a happy ending, some closure. we never found ours. was it coincidence or by design? maybe closure meant letting you go and i was scared. loving you alone was better than not loving you at all, because i don’t know how not to be in love with you. 

this is so fucked up, he writes on page four. i don’t think things were meant to turn out this way. in an ideal world, maybe i would have… maybe you would have… you ever think the universe fights for some people to be together, but they screw it up? their one chance? their one shot? 

on page five, he scribbles, i don’t regret loving you. however we ended–i don’t regret that. i don’t regret you. 

i’m going to be happy, is what jinhyuk ends the letter with. i hope you are too.